Transcript: Waymo Expands, Lyft Builds, Uber Ducks as Tesla Rewrites the Autonomy Script

Executive Summary

This week on Autonomy Markets, Grayson Brulte and Walter Piecyk discuss Waymo three city expansion, Uber’s autonomy strategy and Lyft’s capital investments in robotaxi infrastructure. The episode also covers Tesla’s FSD progress and a “growing angst” in Silicon Valley over Nvidia’s market dominance.

Key Autonomy Markets Episode Questions Answered

Key Autonomy Markets Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] Waymo’s 3-Market Expansion

This week Waymo announced three new markets; San Diego, Las Vegas and Detroit all without Uber, which was announced simultaneously with previous market announcements in Austin and Atlanta. Raising questions about whether Waymo will negotiate partners later or if it signals a new go at it alone strategy.

[03:41] The Strategic Importance of Fleet Management

“Below the line” operations: charging infrastructure, maintenance, and fleet management is critical for scaling robotaxi operations. Lyft understands the importance of fleet management as the company is investing $10-15 million to own its depot in Nashville through its Flexdrive division. Should Waymo follow suit and leverage their in-house real estate division to limit potential risk?

[06:47] The Critical Element of “90% Uptime” and its Challenges

Lyft’s earnings call mentioned a goal of 90% uptime, which they believe they can get paid for. Grayson is skeptical, pointing out the immense challenges in guaranteeing uptime due to sensor supply chains, tariffs, talent, and even the stability of the local power grid.

[14:48] The Emerging Airport Battle between Robotaxis and Uber/Lyft

Grayson predicts that once autonomous vehicles can service airports, there will be a noticeable decline in Uber and Lyft rides to and from them. He shares a personal story from SFO, where he was unable to “hack” the Waymo or Tesla apps to pick him up and had to “go back to the Fred Flintstone age” and use Uber/Lyft.

[16:30] Uber’s Confusing Autonomy Messaging (asset-light vs. asset-heavy)

Grayson argues that Uber is failing to control its autonomy messaging. He points to a contradiction where their SEC filings state they will own Nuro and Lucid vehicles (asset-heavy), while other company statements claim they will be asset-light, creating a confusing and unclear strategy for the market.

[19:55] Uber’s new data-gathering partnership with Nvidia 

On Uber’s Q3 2025 earnings call, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi discussed putting sensor stacks on existing Uber drivers’ cars to gather data for Nvidia. Grayson and Walt question the practicality of this, citing the high cost of multi-sensor (lidar, radar, camera) kits, maintenance, calibration, and theft/vandalism risk for personally-owned vehicles.

[22:58] The “Growing Angst” and Rebellion in Silicon Valley against Nvidia 

Speaking with developers and engineers in Silicon Valley, Grayson reports a “growing angst” around Nvidia. This is due to high chip costs and Nvidia’s market “stranglehold”. Privately, companies are looking at alternatives like Qualcomm and AMD, believing AMD could catch Nvidia within 8-12 months if Nvidia makes a misstep.

[25:40] Why Applied Intuition May Be the “Most Important Company in Autonomy”

After a ride in their test vehicle, Grayson calls Applied Intuition the “most important company in autonomy”. He was impressed by its performance at highway speeds and in urban settings, and he notes their stack scales from robotaxis to trucking and mining. They already partner with 18 of the 20 largest automakers.

[28:38] Tesla’s Annual Meeting: Cybercab, FSD updates, and New Markets

Walt summarizes the Tesla meeting: Elon’s pay package was approved, the “Cybercab” was shown, and they’re aiming to take safety drivers out in Austin. New cities like Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and Miami were named. However, Grayson’s experience trying to use Tesla’s robotaxi service in the Bay Area was “not good,” with a 28-minute wait and an inconvenient pickup spot.

[34:03] Tesla’s AI 5 Chip and the Strategy of Monetizing In-Car Compute

Tesla’s cost-cutting focus is highlighted by its new AI 5 chip, which is 90% cheaper than Nvidia’s Blackwell. This could lead to a full self-driving kit for $300-$400. Walt also notes Tesla’s strategy to monetize in-car compute: when the car is parked, its inference capability can be accessed as a revenue-generating opportunity for the owner.

[37:25] Foreign Autonomy Desk: Japan, China, Canada, and Australia

The Japanese government plans to deploy 10,000 SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicles by 2030 to combat driver shortages. Grayson predicts Europe will become Uber’s largest autonomy market. Finally, Waymo has hired lobbyists in Canada (Ontario, British Columbia) and Australia (Sydney), signaling its next potential international markets.

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Walt, while you were very busy paying attention to earnings calls, I was on the road in Silicon Valley to find out what was going on. And when I’m out there, lo and behold, Waymo makes announcement they’re going to three more markets. Elon got his pay package approved with a 75% vote, and in the Valley I learned there’s a growing rebellion against Nvidia, and most importantly, the drama from the Uber Waymo Saga continues. But let’s start with the expansion of Waymo to three new markets. What do you make of that? Is three, the trifecta.

Walter Piecyk: that’s what it seems like, grace. And it seems like whenever that we announce things, we don’t get individual markets anymore. They drop three of them on us. But you know, the other thing that’s, that I’ve been noticing in these, in, in these Waymo announcements is no partners. I mean, obviously Waymo has a strategy of not. Building their own, um, service centers and, and charging. And in this case, you know, nothing was announced. Um, obviously the big question is, is where’s Uber our, our title last week about the divorce? Definitely got a lot of feedback and got a lot of input, , for sure. But, you know, Uber wasn’t there. Like what do you think the strategy is in general, whether it’s Uber or someone else, like the timeline on when they’re gonna announce, um, partners for these markets, or is it possible that Waymo’s gonna do some of this stuff on their own?

Grayson Brulte: I don’t see the three markets as, as our title generated quite the bit of buzz last week. I don’t do not see any of these markets becoming Uber markets. I do see perhaps a handful, say two. Them becoming partner markets, who, those partners are unsure at this point, but is this a growing sign to the market that Waymo’s gonna announce a market and then negotiate partners? Is that something that we’re looking at? If they do indeed bring partners on at a later date?

Walter Piecyk: I think Uber’s argument on this would be like, that’s not really different than what’s happened historically. Like even if you look at Austin, that wasn’t necessarily an Uber market from the get go. I think Waymo had done a fair amount of work in that market, , before bringing in Uber. So, if you’re Uber, you’re, you might be holding out hope, although we’ll get to this later, but I think there’s, feels like there’s a tone change at Uber in general when they, when they talk about Waymo.

Grayson Brulte: I think tone change is an understatement. All you had to do was listen to the Q3 earnings call to understand that. But if you look at the historical markets that Uber and Waymo have gone. There’s a common denominator when Waymo announces the market through the press release on the Waymo blog, they announced it exclusively with Uber. They did it in Austin, and they did it in Atlanta. That was at the time of the announcement of the market. So I’m just looking at patterns here, and I don’t see that pattern here.

Walter Piecyk: Sure, if you just look at the announcement of the market, but I think the reality is that Waymo had been doing work in Austin prior to, you know, partnering with, with, , Uber, and then announcing that market together. I, I think we’ve heard that from both sides.

Grayson Brulte: Work. Yes. If you wanna put it in quotes, work. Yes. Waymo was there testing. They were testing there for years that was publicly known. And let’s not forget, the Austin market was the first time the individual ever rode in a driverless car in the United States without a steering wheel pedals. It was the blind gentleman that was done in the Waymo Firefly car. Waymo has a long history of being, so work was being done, but market was not announced.

Walter Piecyk: Sure. So we’ll see what happens with these. I guess my point is, and maybe these announcements are happening a little bit earlier than, than the Austin announcement was happening. Obviously they’re happening three at a time. I certainly don’t think you’re making the argument that since these markets were announced without a partner, that there will never be a partner. I think we both agree, and correct me if I’m wrong, that there will be a partner. So to the extent that that decision hasn’t been made, , you know, Uber might be the guy, but the question though is when you say Uber’s gonna be the partner, but there, there’s two part, there’s two elements of a partnership, um, that Waymo is gonna look for in the market. The, you know, who’s gonna service and, and charge these cards as well as perhaps doing a platform, whether they’re gonna choose Waymo one or putting themselves on, uh, Uber or Lyft. So, um, you know, those things, they don’t necessarily, obviously need both, but they certainly need that, you know, that servicing component. And in Uber’s case. They hand that off to someone else, and in Lyft’s case, at least initially, and this is gonna be a part of their strategy, it’s part of Flexdrive and, and they’re making investments as it relates to that.

Grayson Brulte: Gotta get hip Walt, just like the Facebook became Facebook Waymo one became Waymo. They’re, they’re really pushing on that verb. There you are, right about the, the charging infrastructure, the maintenance infrastructure, the fleet management, the fleet, the fleet operations, the below the line as the, as what I call it. And then there’s a real estate element. Alphabet has a very large real estate. Division, they know how to to buy real estate. They know how to manage real estate. Why don’t they make a division inside of Alphabet real estate just to manage these depots and manage operations and bring it all in-house and, and I would say limit their risk since they have experience.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, it’s a good question and I think, you know, as, , Waymo’s management continues to, to deepen. Maybe you bring in people that can recognize those types of, of opportunities and maybe that strategy changes. But in the near term, they’ve looked to partner. And if you’re Lyft, let’s just review what they’re doing in Nashville, spending 10 to $15 million of a capital investment in Nashville. Um, and they’re gonna own the depot. I, I, I’m not sure. In, , Austin, like who owns the Depot in Austin, and this is the one that you and I visited. We have video of this, it was formerly called move. They’re now called Avommo. Like who owns that in, in that relationship? Do we know?

Grayson Brulte: We, we don’t know who owns it, but let’s just put the cards on the table. The potential potential owners could be a real estate company that, that they’re leasing it to, uh, some division inside of Alphabet. Uber, we don’t know, but here’s the most clever thing that we do know. It’s directly across the street from the Tesla crash station. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but that’s a little interesting.

Walter Piecyk: I do remember that as well, Grayson. So the interesting thing about the ownership is like you have Dara Kay from Uber on their call talking about REITs. But also referencing like REITs in the cars and just as a point of reference, like cars are a movable asset. When I’ve talked about this in the past, I’ve noted that in saying that is not a REITable. Asset. Hopefully there might be tax changes in the future to do it. So if you wanna reit your investment in the infrastructure, you, you kind of need to own the land, I think, and, and the charging stations. And I don’t believe that’s the case with Uber. Now, let’s take Lyft as an example. They will own this asset, right? And Flexdrive is an, is an important element of this. In fact, Lyft goes one step further on their earnings call, they started talking about 90% uptime. And they think Lyft is and they believe that they’re gonna get paid for that. Talk to us about your view on the importance of uptime and what that means.

Grayson Brulte: Uptime’s the most critical element, but how can you, outside of contractual agreements, outside of playbooks, how do you guarantee uptime? Because there’s a lot of, uh, elements that go into making an AV work. There’s a supply chain. When we were in Austin, you and I had long conversations about this when we saw the Waymo going, what, 15 miles an hour, 12 miles an hour around the depot trying to calibrate. You have sensor supply chain issues, you have tariff issues. So the 90%, I like to see some clarity on how you do that. ’cause unless you have a backlog of supply in that warehouse, you have talent that knows how to move all the componentry. And you have redundant power. I’m unsure how you’re gonna get 90%. ’cause let’s not forget 2032, Nashville runs outta power if they don’t continue to build out the energy grid.

Walter Piecyk: You’ve forgotten one of the most important elements there, Grayson, which is the software to manage the fleet. Right, but it’s ex, but you hit on also very important elements, management expertise. You don’t have a, you know, what was in fact with Avomo, a foreign company inserting them into the US and say, Hey, go figure out how to, how to build this asset there. Right? This is Lyft with, with Flexdrive, who is experienced in this. They have a software element to make sure that the cars are coming in there. You and I viewed. That of Avomo. I was also, I viewed Transdev in, in Los Angeles, I think, um, there was another one in Los Angeles. These don’t feel like optimized service centers. You could argue it’s early, right? But if you, if you optimize this and you run it, and there’s other companies out there are, that I think are, are, you know, working on that software. That can be a critical advantage. Let’s, let’s make this clear. Lyft and Uber, when they wanna partner with third parties, will say, Hey, use our software. But the question is like, if you are a, you know, a fleet manager, do you wanna be that tied into Uber where they’re providing you the demand for your rides and how you’re gonna manage your cars and you’re gonna get that tied in to Uber’s ecosystem, not necessarily the ideal situation. So I think there is, again, in this service component. Something that if run properly, can be a business on its own. And I think, you know, Lyft I think has some foresight in trying to build this up, obviously early. Right? Only in Nashville right now.

Grayson Brulte: two points to, to touch on one future, one historical. The sensors are going to change on these vehicles. We, we see that Waymo is rolling out the Zeekrs and, and at some point the Hyundai. So you’re gonna need expertise across a variety of vehicles. And if they decide to swap out the sensors, you’re getting expertise on those. And the his, that, that’s the future statement. The historical statement is when Transdev, who I’ve been very fortunate to know several of their CEOs over the years. They hosted me at Babcock Ranch in Florida where they were running a deployment of sh of shuttlesin Sid Kiton’s Babcock Ranch. Here’s the thing, Walt, it ran on Transdev software. Transdev managed the deployment. I know it was shuttles that wasn’t robotaxis, but Transdev built the entire operational structure, the service center and the software to manage it. And Transdev is probably one of the most important companies in autonomy today that doesn’t get enough credit because their expertise is very, very deep. And they’ve been in this since the beginning.

Walter Piecyk: And I think there are other fleet managers out there that are building their own software. They want to have it separate. They don’t want to have to rely on. Uber or Waymo or whoever you want to bring a diversity of either platforms or cars, depending on who you are. Like, again, if you’re the fleet manager that’s out there, let, let’s, let’s go back to Lyft. That’s kind of one of those players in the market. And you know, if you have, if, if we’ve already established, I think that, you know, Waymo has announced these markets, maybe they’ve even started with a market, let’s say they’ve started with Avis. Things aren’t going well, they dial up. , You know, Lyft and say, Hey, Avis isn’t going right. Let’s unplug them. We’re gonna plug you guys in. We’re gonna only do the Waymo One app. I’m sorry, the Waymo app. We’re not gonna put it on the Lyft. I think if, if Lyft is presented with that opportunity, they go for it. They do it, they say, yes, we’re gonna build Flexdrive as its own thing. And then over time you’re gonna see the sense of. Also plugging those Waymo’s into our platform because not only what we’re doing with Nashville, but we’ll be your partner because we built such a good, you know, service center. If, if, you know, if Flexdrive can get there, , how do you envision that rolling out? Like is that something that could happen? What do you know about what’s going on with Avis as an example?

Grayson Brulte: If Flexdrive can do that, that becomes a strategic asset for Lyft. Let’s call a a spade a spade there. But in the, uh, if you wanna call in the environment of partnerships and if that’s what you wanna use, the term partnerships or marriage or anytime you want to use it, becomes very difficult to unwind these things. So here’s a hypothetical. Alphabet has an extremely strong balance sheet. What if they just set up, they call it Waymo Holdings or, or, or whatever term you want to use, and they said, okay, we’re gonna go buy the real estate. We’re gonna own it. We’re gonna own all these assets. Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna hold it on our balance sheet. And they picked the partner. And if something happens with that partnership, they can easily move it over because they own the assets. It wasn’t an, I’ll use the term, it wasn’t in a joint checking account. It was all theirs and, and they can easily move it. So that’s gonna be something to watch of, of who owns the own, uh, the, the assets. ’cause it gives ’em the ability to move As it relates to Avis, uh, unsure. We, it’s been very quiet. We haven’t heard much and a sign to look at, in my opinion, if it was going gangbusters, I think you would’ve seen an announcement. Gil West is now running Hertz, former COO of Cruise. You would’ve saw something there. Enterprise, that’s the Enterprise Mobility Division. You would’ve saw something there. They invested in voyage in the back of days. The peers in Sixt out of Europe, the peers in the rental, carpentry have been very, very quiet. Is that a telling sign? Do they know something perhaps?

Walter Piecyk: Yeah, I, I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I, and I just think this market is, is wide open. Obviously you and I talk about it a lot. We care about it a lot. , You know, the flip side of your argument of those being connected and, and hard to, to disconnect is the opposite, which is, again, getting back to Austin. Let’s just assume for sake of argument, I don’t know whether this is true or not, that, uh, Uber doesn’t own that real estate. Maybe if Avomo doesn’t even own the real estate. ’cause Uber owns a stake in, in Avomo. , It’s easier then for Waymo to disconnect and shift to a, a Waymo market as a, as as opposed to an Uber market. This, this goes back to why I think this is an important element of the strategy and then outsourcing it and not owning it, , you know, reduces your strategic, , value to the autonomy partners. , You know, not to mention gives up the, these REIT-treatments that you can get for it now. If you’re Uber, their attitude has been like, well, we’re Uber like we are the market, so like, they should be coming to us. We shouldn’t be coming to them. Right. The, the, the messaging has been like, well, the supply is not there until 2028. And by the way, like I’ve been the biggest, you know, proponent or critic I guess, of that in terms of Waymo, like you need supply. With that said, like. You have a lot of markets that are gonna get a hundred cars, 200 cars, 300 that are gonna start showing up in Uber’s results. Uber’s was already a little soft. Uber Eats kind of helped the numbers. Once you start seeing Waymo connect to airports and, and market by market, you still, it, it, it’s gonna show up in those numbers even though they may not have tens of thousands of cars on the market in, in 2026. But I think it’s, it’s, we might be stepping in, in, in a situation where just Uber. Views their existing power in the market. Uh, I think in a way, um, that they might be leaving something on the table as it relates to the servicing of the cars and how that cements their relationship with autonomy fleets.

Grayson Brulte: That’s a very valid point. ’cause you’re right, they’re an investor in Avomo, they’re an investor in Moove, but they don’t, they don’t own their own strategic asset as Lyft, as Flexdrive. You’re right about airports. When autonomy scales to airports, you are, and this is a prediction and I’m gonna go on the record with this. You will start to see a decline in Uber and Lyft rides. To and from airports. And I tell you a funny aside here, I was at the SFO airport this week. I was terrified that I was gonna get stranded ’cause all the, the flight cancellations. But I made it in and out of SFO and I lived to tell the story. So I get there like any other normal person, okay, ride help. No, that’s boring. So I open up the Tesla Robotaxi Appcause I have access and I try and jigger the thing. Nope, you’re blocked, you can’t order it. I said, aha, there’s gotta be a Waymo hack to do this. Have access. Nope. Couldn’t, couldn’t order it. Tried to trick it. So I had to go back and I felt like a dinosaur. I was going back to the Fred Flintstone age, I had to open up the Uber app. I was like, well, that’s, that seems too expensive to go into Menlo Park. And I opened up the Lyft, it, it was $40 cheaper. So that’s what I used. And, and, and that’s how I got there. And I didn’t really like it. I’m sorry. I didn’t really like it. I missed my autonomy experience there.

Walter Piecyk: you weren’t willing to go to the Kiss and fly lot ’cause that’s where you can pick up the Waymo. I thought you, this goes back to Grayson not wanting to go too far to get his car. That was the issue?

Grayson Brulte: No, so the kiss and fly, you have to be a Waymo employee and I’m not a Waymo employee, so I don’t have access to that.

Walter Piecyk: Oh really? Okay.

Grayson Brulte: Yes. So I was just trying to trick this thing to be nice to me. That’s what I was trying to do. Trick it. To be nice. But let’s get back to the core point. So you made the point about airports, but it just seems, and listening to the, to the earnings call when I was out in the valley. There wasn’t really a lot of talk about autonomy, it seems that lift up the rug, sw sw, sweep it under. What do you think that was about? ’cause the conversation to me that I had in the valley with several executives, it comes down to messaging. I don’t feel that Uber, in my personal humble opinion, is doing a very good job of messaging their autonomy strategy. Because in the SEC filings, they’re saying that we’re gonna own assets, we’re gonna own the Nuro Lucid vehicles. And then when you speak with individuals, they say, no, no, no, we’re gonna be asset light. And then you have other individuals that say something. So it just seems that there’s three stories coming from one company and the messaging is not clear and concise.

Walter Piecyk: I think that that’s probably right. I mean, look, they’re obviously making a lot of investments and they’re constantly making announcements with individual autonomy companies that’s fragmented and saying they’re gonna continue to invest in this market. But at the same time saying like, you know, international’s gonna be driver out before the US we’re capacity constrained and. That narrative may struggle a little bit. If Tesla actually, starts delivering on driver out by the end of the year, which was talked about at the, at the annual meeting again. Um, ’cause clearly Tesla’s not gonna have the same supply issues, uh, that Waymo has. And also like if you build that narrative of it being capacity constrained, and then I’ve talked about this on so many of our podcasts, but we wake up one morning and maybe it’s not Toyota. Or maybe it’s not Hyundai or whatever it is, but Waymo identifies another OEM, , that has credibility that, you know, people are like, oh shit. Like, here comes, you know, insert OEM here with lots of cars at the same time that Waymo is like, you know, launching market after market with whatever it is, seventy five, a hundred fifty, three hundred cars, um, which keeps that, that autonomy narrative going.

Grayson Brulte: I’ll give you, if you want to call it, if you use the term the oh shit moment, you want to have that holy cow moment. I’ll give you a scenario. This is all hypothetical. VW is in secular decline. They have the relationship. With Mobileye, but as we’ve seen historically in automotive, those relationships don’t necessarily last forever. What if we wake up one day Walt and all of a suddenly Waymo announces a deal with vw, they’ve got a massive vehicle, they could deploy this in Europe in the us and that’s one of those, oh shit moments if I’m over because. Vw iss an Uber partner right now with Mobileye and, and here’s the kicker. They’re currently not operating driver out or safety driver out in Austin. So based on everything that you and I know everything we’ve experienced, there’s a long way for that to go before they can deliver to Uber, which they said in 2027 with the caveat of safety drivers.

Walter Piecyk: the pushback is gonna be whatever that announcement is, it’s gonna take time. ’cause these OEMs move slowly in terms of when they actually get that volume. So I think the bigger risk to the, the, you know, at least the current Uber narrative is if Hyundai ramps. So maybe the fact that Uber’s talking this up. Is they have some insight in the fact that Hyundai or, or Zeekr is not ramping as, as, you know, maybe as quickly as, as many people expect, and he views there.

Grayson Brulte: It could be. I think Uber’s being strategic. I think that perhaps they, they do know something and I just think it goes back to messaging and that they’re, that they’re losing control of the messaging and they’re trying to take it. And, uh, and I wanna sit in the messaging front here, and I want your opinion on this. It seems that, and this is historical, we’re gonna go back to the early days of autonomy. I’m saying this for the record, we’re in trouble. We need to raise money. Roll out Jensen and Nvidia, put out a press release. It’s historical, you and I know it’s been well documented. What do you make of, of that announcement?

Walter Piecyk: I mean, Jensen kind of stuck his foot in his mouth this week by saying the US is behind China in AI before cleaning it up and Open AI had their own. Foot and mouth moments, but, um, I mean, you’re right that the company’s bear hug, whoever the leader is in the market. In this case, Nvidia, and on the call Dara talked about putting sensor stacks on existing cars of Uber drivers to gather data for Nvidia. Enable what effectively is gonna be the competitor, potentially the competitor, to a lot of your autonomous partners. Meaning that like if Uber had a partnership with Wayve. Wayve obviously is working with Nvidia, but they’re also trying to help Nvidia, Nvidia build like a bigger stack that they can take to an OEM or like, it’s, it’s just kind of a, an odd situation. Um, and also, like, I kind of question this, meaning that like, Uber doesn’t have that many fleet guys out there and, and the ones I’ve talked other than like taxis in Europe, which I’m not sure you’re putting sensors on taxis, maybe you are, but the fleets that are out there, I don’t think Uber has. Talk to them yet about putting sensor stacks on their cars. So, and are you gonna do like a onesie twosie thing where like, Uber drivers can, like, pull up to a depot somewhere, like an individual driver and put a sensor stack in order to collect data for data for Nvidia? I mean, that seems, I don’t know. I, I don’t know. We’re gonna have to, we’re gonna have to do more work on understanding exactly how many of these Uber cars will get sensor stacks on them for the purpose of collecting data for Nvidia.

Grayson Brulte: If you’re looking at co collecting data, and I gotta give a shout out to Peter Ludwig over at Applied Intution, just give me a really great deep dive on this topic. When you’re looking at collecting data, you have to have a multi, a range of sensors to get a truly vast data set. You need the lidar, you need the radar, you need the camera one. That’s expensive. So who’s gonna pay for that? Two, that has to be maintained and in some cases calibrated. And three, as we saw when the Dodgers won the World Series, they become a target. So if you’re gonna take your sensor car, park it on the street in a certain part of the city, you could wake up one morning and you have no lidar, who’s gonna be responsible for that?

Walter Piecyk: Right. And remember, these are people’s personally owned cars that sometimes they use to drive, but again, there’s probably a lot of. Five car fleets out there, 10 car fleets, if you were dealing with that on a one off basis. I mean, I guess, um, but we’ll see.

Grayson Brulte: Before we move on, there’s one thing I wanna say. Not all data is created equal garbage in, garbage out.

Walter Piecyk: Well, I think the data’s gonna be good though. If your drivers, I think it would have to be hooked up to the actual driver to know what they’re doing. As opposed to just, I mean, this can’t be just like a slap it on there and just get the camera data. They have to be some information, um, from the driver. And by the way, like if that’s a value, this goes back to, to, um, Tesla and like Tesla’s getting all this data from all of their, the cars that are out there and people that are using FSD, that just validates the fact that, you know, that is a positive thing to have. When you’re developing autonomy, what, what’s, you know, you were in the valley. What’s the, what is the view in terms of, um, Nvidia these days and, and what they’re trying to accomplish in autonomy?

Grayson Brulte: There’s a growing. I won’t use the word concern, but I’ll use, there’s a growing angst around Nvidia. There’s a growing angst as it comes to how expensive the chips are, the, the stranglehold on the market. And you’re starting to see, and this is speaking with developers and, and engineers, the folks that are building it, not the the executive extens, but the actual folks building it. They’re looking at, Qualcomm kept coming up a lot. The CEO Qualcomm has been making the rounds talking about their GPU chip that’s getting traction and the one that really came up. AMD, the certain individuals I spoke to believe within eight to 12 months, if Nvidia makes a misstep, which I’m not saying they will, AMD can catch them and really start to grow the automotive business. So there’s a growing, we wanna move away from Nvidia at the same time. No, no, no. Publicly we, we love Jensen, we love Nvidia, but privately companies are starting to look at ways. To move away from Nvidia. It’s starting to be, it’s not just isolated at one company or two or three companies, Walt. This was a growing trend with all the companies that I met with.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, it makes sense if, and again, we talked about this on, I think last week and the week before, his podcast, if. After, um, you know, Nvidia had their, their big conference in, in dc If you’re saying, Hey, we’re gonna sell U Compute, but we’re also gonna provide a software stack to become our own, to enable our own autonomous OEMs. In the case of, um, stellantis, um, then, you know, you’re obviously gonna look for potential alternatives as you continue to develop your product. And look, you know, I think we’ve seen this, whether it’s sensors. Compute or other things as companies come out with their new hardware for every new autonomous pro uh, product, there’s always an opportunity for someone to step in and play a new role in a new autonomy stack.

Grayson Brulte: That’s a very valid point. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m wearing the hat. I’m not a very good golfer, but KPMG was very kind to host me at their annual technology M&A conference. One of the themes at the, the m and a conference that they had was around acquisition. Does, does Nvidia make a move? Does one of the, does one of the well-balanced licensing AV companies make a move and for the executives from KPMG are seeing consolidation coming? So there, there is that potential consolidation and if NVIDIA does consolidate and purchase somebody that impact on the market that you and I have discussed is gonna be pretty significant there.

Walter Piecyk: What else did you learn when you were in this this lovely trip to the West coast?

Grayson Brulte: I think the most important thing that I learned outside of the Nvidia and, and all the, the deal flow that is coming was the time that I spent with Qasar and Peter over at Applied Intuition. Yeah. They’re both the, the co-founders and they’re very kind to put me in the applied intuition SDS vehicle and I gotta say Walt. I came away impressed. I’ve said this many times. I’m gonna say this again for the record. I believe Applied Intuition is the most important company in autonomy, and there’s big things coming. The vehicle performed exceptionally well. Highway speeds, urban environments. This thing scales. They become a very, very big player, not just on the software side for the tools, but in the driving side as well.

Walter Piecyk: But what, what is this vehicle? Who are they developing it for? Where will we see it? Is it privately owned? Is it gonna be part of a robo fleet? Like what’s, what’s, who is the. OEM partner.

Grayson Brulte: Applied Intuition has 18 of the 20 largest auto manufacturers around the world as partners. So you can put your, if you wanna put your Clouseau hat on and use your imagination, you can see that go. And the important part to point out that just will not, that stack is not just for on-road driving for robot taxis. It’s also for 18 wheeler class A trucks. It’s also for, for off-road mining. And oh, by the way, if you don’t think they’re done yet, they did an autonomous fighters yet that beat a top gun pilot in a fire to fight.

Walter Piecyk: But where will, where’s the first time that I, I can. Pay for a ride or, or buy a car that’s powered by applied intuition.

Grayson Brulte: My intuition says, and that’s my intuition, not not applied intuitions, but my intuition. You’ll see. 27 to 28, and in some form of some major, major OEM. That’s pure speculation on my part 27 to 28, whether that goes into a robotaxi or personally owned, unsure. But 27 to 28 is when you’ll truly, I believe that you will see it out there and you’ll be able to experience it. But while you know me and I know you, So I think you’re gonna get a little early ride.

Walter Piecyk: So is this like a Mobileye type of situation where they’re working directly with the OEMs to enable the OEMs to deliver autonomy in their cars? And that sounds like more of a private ownership path than anything.

Grayson Brulte: I think if you look at it from a an an SDS standpoint, think of it as a Nuro Wayve where they’re gonna license the stack. But they also do all the tooling supplies to do the the in vehicle software. So think of it as an add-on. So if you have a box of Legos, you’re just adding on another Lego. They’re basically building the complete software defined vehicle, and now they’re also building an autonomous driving feature to plug into it.

Walter Piecyk: we will. We’ll have to keep an eye on ’em. Let’s move on to the Tesla annual meeting. Always fascinating when you see a group of, um, very fervent investors gathered together. , And if Elon gets up on stage, he got his, as everyone knows, had his pay package approved. So obviously should be no bumps in the road in terms of the focus in the development in that company. He showed the cyber cab. Um, so your mixed prediction in terms of the couple hundred cars that we are expecting in Austin by the middle of next year, including some Cybercab, looks like it’s. It kind of is on bet on, you know, on track. , They once again talked about taking the safety riders out of Austin. I think that’s gonna be a massive catalyst for the company and for the industry in terms of how they’re perceived. And I think, you know, they’ve talked about states where they’re gonna have autonomy after Austin and, and the Bay Area. Um, and they listed them in the cities now, Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and Miami. I mean, close to you. None of them obviously a surprise based on the states, uh, that are mentioned, but obviously getting more specific and more granularity. Um, around this. Were were you able, as a, you know, they claim to be in the Bay Area. What was your robo Taxii experience like if you had one in the Bay Area, you, you already told us about the airport, but did you, did you ever get in one.

Grayson Brulte: Not good is, is what? Is what I’ll say not good. They are supply constrained. The, I’m at the hotel and I was like, oh, okay, I’m going to see a friend for dinner, so I’ll order the robotaxi. I open it up and it’s like, okay, I’m gonna be prepared. 15 minutes. It’s, it’s new 28 minute wait. I said, holy cow. No way. I said, okay. Well, yeah, sure. Okay, I’ll tell my friend. I’ll be 15 minutes late. I’ll wait. Well, then I look at it, it won’t pick me up at the hotel, Walt, it wants me to, and I’m on Sand Hill Road. It wants me to walk across the street to go to the Kleiner Perkins office to get picked up. I said, what happens when the chicken crosses the road? I said, I don’t wanna end up flattened. And, and then I, I, I tweeted at Elon. I said, what’s going on? No response. But got some interesting feedback from, from folks so long, massively long wait times, unusual pickup and drop off spots and it just didn’t. Wasn’t functioning right for me. Just didn’t make any sense to use it.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, in this case, the supply constraint is more of supply of humans constraint because you know, they have, they’re putting a human. In the driver’s seat as an observer, you know, for those cars. So that’s obviously the reason. So they need to get to the point where the technology gets to where they can take the driver out. And, you know, still a lot of words around this. Timelines that are coming up in, you know, less than 60 days now in Austin. More commentary at this annual meeting about unsupervised FSD. You’re now on 14.1 0.3. Elon mentioned at this meeting that when you get to 14.3, right, so it would be 14.2 something when we get to 14.3, presumably at some point next year, that they would allow texting and driving. I think you talked about falling asleep in the car, stuff like that. So still talking a lot about the progress, but until you can obviously take those attendance out. You know, supply is meaningless because, you know, you’d have to supply humans and the whole point of autonomy is not to have the humans. So, um, I think that obviously colors your experience in, in California. So to expand California to larger markets is kind of silly for Tesla. If you don’t have, if you have to rely on humans to actually continue to drive those cars.

Grayson Brulte: And you have to be able to pick up. Pick up where you’re located. If you’re within the ODD, how could you not pick up at a major hotel in the valley? And you wanna know? An interesting thing about the hotel is speaking with the valet guys. The Waymo’s come in there. No driver and Waymo’s have a cone issue at the hotel where you have on the, on the one side you have it if you, your guests getting ready to check in. Then you have the Uber, Lyft on this side. The Waymo struggle looking at the cones. It’s fascinating. So they still, there’s still a cone issue there.

Walter Piecyk: let’s assume that. It actually does get delivered. And he says, you can do it. What? You know, what is, uh, Duffy gonna say? What, how is the regulation and insurance gonna work if, you know, I’m sure my, I I, currently, my car is covered by my own insurance, and Elon says, Hey, I can start texting and driving, you know, with 14.3, what’s my insurance company gonna say about that? And what’s the, you know, what’s my my regulator, what are my regulators gonna say about that?

Grayson Brulte: It’s gonna open a can of worms because if the way that the law is written today, that’s written today, I want to clarify that written today. If you have the ability to take over a motor vehicle technical term there for you, you are responsible whether there’s pedals, there’s a steering wheel. So 14.3, you said I could fall. Sorry, Elon said I could fall asleep. Not Walt, but see, Walt’s a good driver. He says, no, you gotta pay attention.

Walter Piecyk: I don’t, first of all, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna misquote either. I, I know that he said. Allow texting and driving within a couple of months. I don’t know if it was there at one point during this presentation, he did say You can take a nap while the car drives, but I might be confusing the two things. Either way, texting and driving is just as bad from an insurance company standpoint, so let’s assume they say that with 14 three.

Grayson Brulte: Okay, so hypothetically, let’s just say hypothetically, ’cause we don’t have the record here, that you can. Nap in the vehicle, you’re, you’re still responsible in the, in the, if something happens. Another thing is if you’re drunk, you’re high or you’re intoxicated. That’s a DUI. So where, where does that liability fall? ’cause you know, and I know that people are gonna call their drunk mobile that, oh, this is really great. I can get home safely from the bar. So watch that as you watch those things. The other element to watch that I watch very, very closely. What states does Tesla get licensed to sell Tesla insurance? And this week, the big news, Tesla now has the legal authority to sell insurance in the state of California, and they open that market. That is a massive insurance market, a massive breakthrough. So watch that as they start to expand this service.

Walter Piecyk: Aside from getting in this insurance thing in California talked about. The other big one is, you know, if they get FSD approval in China, which I think there is some expectation delivered at this annual meeting of accomplishing that within a, within a couple of months.

Grayson Brulte: It’s clear we’ve covered it. FSD is scaling. And in order for FSD to scale, Tesla continues to focus on cost cutting. We saw it with the AI five announcement for the chip, 90% less than Nvidia Blackwell. That goes back to the conversation I was having in the Valley. So this is hypothetical. If you put the AI five chip in, you put the camera set. War. Do you wall $300 a vehicle? $400 a vehicle for a full self-driving kit? Could you, you know the pressure that’s gonna put on global OEMs and Global Robotaxis to get costs down.

Walter Piecyk: I mean, they’ve talked a lot about cost, which is great, and these very low cents per mile in terms of how to run it. But as always, let, let’s just get the technology to work first, first and foremost, and, and all that stuff will follow. What was interesting, and this is not the first time it’s been said, but I think it’s, it’s interesting in the context of, um, Uber has talked about, hey, if we want our drivers to be happy or we wanna try and give them other mo monetization opportunities, there’s mul this concept of multi-gig, meaning I’m sitting in my car and I’ve got digital tasks that I can do in order to get paid. I don’t think they want to like go and do TaskRabbit type of stuff. They want the guy in the car. You know, available to them as supply. I mean, maybe earning money. Tesla’s spin on this is, Hey, we’re gonna have this compute in all of these Teslas. We’re gonna earn you money. You know, if you’ve plugged your Tesla, you know, out into the Robax fleet, you make money. If it’s sitting in your garage and connected to whatever, then we’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna access that. Um, inference that’s available in each of these cars as a revenue generating opportunity. So if the end game here in lowering the cost of ride share is finding how to monetize the vehicle the best way possible, then when you actually own the compute in the car, that probably is maybe more attractive than giving someone a digital task to do on their phone when they’re sitting there waiting for their next ride.

Grayson Brulte: Correct. ’cause at some point the vehicles, the Teslas FSD will be unsupervised. They’ll be out there in a fleet, and then you don’t have the growing trend that Uber and Lyft are facing. No tips, no trips. And if you go through some of this rideshare stuff, I don’t want to be an AI data labeler. Well with the Tesla, you put it into the network or you plug it in, you’re not doing all that. So it’s a very valid point as a diverging strategies, and I’m just gonna vote that people much rather plug it in and get paid than have to data label.

Walter Piecyk: Then actually plug in and have their car do the work, and then do the work themselves. Imagine that you’re really going on a limb on that one. Grayson,. It is time for the foreign autonomy desk. What do you have for us this week?

Grayson Brulte: The Japanese government is leaning in once again to autonomy despite the regulatory en environment there. They’re looking to deploy 10,000 SAE level four autonomous trucks, buses, and vehicles by 2030 to deal with the growing driver shortage and the aging population.

Walter Piecyk: Grayson, do we have anything to say about Uber? ’cause I know again, they talked in the autonomy world, they expect those markets. It’s seems like there’s leaning into international more than America saying that they’re gonna be driver out there first. Well, what’s going on with Uber in Europe?

Grayson Brulte: Uber’s leaning into Europe in a big way. I’ll go on here. It’s autonomy markets. I’ll make a prediction. We’re not poly market, but I’ll make a prediction here. Europe will become Uber’s largest autonomy market. Dara is leaning into it and messaging on social. The the chatter that’s brewing is they’re all leaning in there and we’re continuing to get statements around their growing partnerships there in the eu.

Walter Piecyk: We have Baidu doing 250,000 fully autonomous robotaxi rides a week. Not sure what that means, what those individual. Markets are, but certainly Baidu’s out there as an autonomy player.

Grayson Brulte: They are, we we need We need details. We need details. We need details. We need details.

Walter Piecyk: Good luck with that. You, by the way, you had, uh, we ride and, and pony, you know, launch on the Hong Kong exchange. Markets have, haven’t exactly been strong, but, you know, it hasn’t been a great debut for them in their, in their flight away to, um, the Hong Kong markets.

Grayson Brulte: No, it, it hasn’t, but we’re gonna continue to watch it. I think that it’s a strategic hedge in case of the, the regulatory environment here in the United States and, and staying on the foreign theme. We had. Uh, filings from Waymo in Canada. They’re, look, they’ve hired lobbyists looking at Ontario and looking at British Columbia. So I’ll go on the record here and I’ll say it’s probably going to be Vancouver. Toronto also spoke to an individual in Quebec. He said, don’t rule out Montreal. And also they hired lobbyists down under in Sydney. And we’re starting to see, uh, comments from the Australian government of wanting Waymo. So perhaps the Canada and Australia are the next international markets for Waymo.

Walter Piecyk: No offense to Canada, but how about you just allocate more cars to some of our US markets before expanding up north?

Grayson Brulte: Waymo is going to have to figure out their car issue, and we’re gonna be here each and every week to ask about the supply constraint issues. Sundar, sir. Walt and I are be honored, sir, to have you on autonomy markets to discuss Waymo. That’s an open invitation, sir, to come on here and discuss it. And yes, we will ask you about vehicle constraint and me being me, I’ll ask you about quantum computing and all the breakthroughs at Gemini. That’s my pitch, Walt to have Sundar on here on the pod. But what do we need to look for on the atomic markets over the coming week?

Walter Piecyk: Another for me, just another big week in earnings. You have Kodiak. First quarter, I think, since getting their SPAC approved serve, which we, we spend time with Instacart \ which, you know, do have some autonomy element to what they can accomplish. And, uh, you know, smaller company, but interesting Luminar, CFO leaves, like there’s a lot of stuff going on at Luminar. , So we’ll see what they have to say on, on, uh, Thursday, I think.

Grayson Brulte: I’m just gonna go on a limb here. I think the Luminar call could potentially be the most interesting earnings call next week. The future is bright. The future autonomous. The future is ownership. Walt. Until next week,